Reflections

Was perusing the archives, which is a cute way of saying 'stumbling through a mishmash of folders and arcane filing systems,' and accidentally wandered off topic before I'd even got started. Nothing new there. Had wandered back to my photos from 2020 because Louisville has found its way back into the headlines again. The city finally agreed to a consent decree, which means LMPD will finally have to answer to someone other than just themselves. It's only for five years instead of the usual ten, the mayor tried to argue that they'd already been implementing reforms for the past few years but then news broke a few days ago about LMPD citing a woman in labor for illegal camping.

Being homeless is now illegal in the great state of Kentucky, was going to dedicate this to that thin blue line that protects us from the dangers of public placenta but I couldn't bear to stare at their photos long enough to.

The white marks on the wall in the photo above are from when they were protecting us by shooting pepper balls at us. 2020 was one hell of a year. These photos are all bycatch, stuff that'd caught my eye while I was focused on something else that year and never quite got back around to.

Between the pandemic, the lockdowns, protests, police brutality, and everything else that went down in 2020, it was nice to find things that were twisted and absurd, but in a nonthreatening way. It got more difficult to do as the year went on, everything downtown seemed to have grown a plywood shell. Then again, downtown was a deserted shell of itself that year anyways.

Remote work and all the other changes wrought by covid have likely changed the dynamics of downtowns forever. All I know is there's less opportunities for street photography.

Alright, who's pining for the fjords lockdown already?